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For the last 14 years, Beth has served as a Speech Language Pathologist (SLP), a calling she loves. A speech language pathologist is someone who diagnoses and treats language and speech disorders and Beth has worked for Meritus Health at Total Rehab Care providing outpatient pediatric rehabilitation services for a little over a year now. As college student, Beth shared she began her career with a placement at Total Rehab Care and she is so she is happy to have come full circle.

Beth’s position (and the positions of many other Meritus Health employees) was significantly impacted during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, Meritus Health established the Pay Protection Program (PPP), which Beth chose to participate. The PPP helped deploy staff to areas of need while preserving an employees’ pay if their normal role was in an area impacted by service disruptions. As a participant of the PPP, her tasks included temperature screening, putting testing kits together, coordinating equipment supplies and eventually, she found a steady role at the call center. At the call center, she would reach out to employees in the program and coordinate shifts in various roles. Her main takeaway from the experience was to be open to new opportunities as they come. Admittedly, she gained personal and professional skills that she might not have gained otherwise and most importantly, the value of teamwork was re-rooted.

Once Beth was able to return to her regular position, new and exciting opportunities were offered for her to cross-train to expand her skillsets within in her career. She took the opportunity to re-acclimate herself in providing adult speech and language therapies. With this, she has a renewed passion in what she does and why she does it - all to help and heal the patients she encounters. She has learned that being flexible and keeping an open mind has also helped her within her patient therapy sessions. She knows the joy she gives and the joy she receives by delivering the best services possible to her patients!

In addition to her renewed appreciation for team members serving various roles throughout Meritus Health, Beth expressed her profound gratitude toward the career that she has chosen. “There is something that can’t be put into words or measured tangibly, about seeing the look on a parent’s face when their child learns to say their first words. Or seeing a patient whose hope is restored following a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) or stroke. All of those things mean more to me that I can say.”

For more information about speech and language services offered by Total Rehab Care or to make a gift in support of rehabilitation therapy programs offered by Meritus Health, please visit MeritusHealth.com/foundation or call (301) 790-8631.